Monday, July 28, 2014

The Great War started one hundred years ago, on July 28, 1914. It was later known as the first world war, but the term "Great War" better conveys the enormity of something that had never happened before in human history. Here I propose an interpretation of the war based on the emergent properties of complex systems: the triumph of propaganda.

One hundred years after the start of the Great War, we are still struggling to understand what caused Europeans to decide that it was a good idea to kill each other by the millions while staying in humid and lice infested trenches. Political and economic factors are often mentioned, but are hardly sufficient. Wars have been around from the beginning of human history, but had never reached the size and the level of ferocity of the Great War.

What made the Great War so destructive was the power of what was later called "propaganda" (and which today we tend to call "consensus building"). In turn, propaganda was a classic case of an emergent phenomenon of complex systems. It was an unexpected result of the diffusion of literacy in industrialized countries. As an example, by the end of the 19th century, France had achieved a nearly 100% degree of literacy in its population (image below from Wikipedia). Several European countries, including Germany, Britain, and others, had reached similar rates.

People were taught to read and write because literacy was a useful ability in a rapidly industrializing society. But, for literacy, just as for many other things, there holds the law of unexpected consequences. Once most people were able to read and write, the rules of the game of communication changed completely. Before the age of literacy, governments had to rely on town criers screaming "hear ye, hear ye!" in order to tell their subjects that a war had been declared and that they had to enlist in the army. With literacy, people would read newspapers and were told not only that they had to enlist, but how good and beautiful it was to enlist to fight against the evil monsters that the enemies were.

In a classic case of reinforcing feedback, propaganda fed on itself. As people became more and more convinced to be on the side of good against evil, the war became harsher and more out of control, generating more hate and more propaganda. In part, this disastrous spiral was a spontaneous phenomenon, but soon governments learned how to exploit it. It took some time to develop the right techniques, but we can pinpoint the beginning of modern war propaganda methods with the sinking of the British ship "Lusitania" by a German submarine in 1915. Allied propaganda exploited the sinking in ways which we can easily recognize as a standard part of "false flag" operations: the extensive use of the media to demonize the enemy. These technologies are still commonly used today and are perhaps more effective than ever.

Today, images and movies are used to complement and replace the written world of a century ago, but the basic mechanism of propaganda remains the same: governments can reach their subjects with a tremendous barrage of false or distorted information. People are not normally equipped to defend themselves from this onrush of disinformation and tend to react either believing in it or taking refuge in bizarre conspiracy theories - often manufactured as part of more false flag propaganda operations.

The emergent phenomenon of propaganda during the Great War took most people by surprise and, after the war was over, there were several attempts to understand it and - if possible - control it. Edward Bernays was a pioneer in this field with his 1928 book "Propaganda". He was an optimist and thought that propaganda could be used for good purposes. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to control a self-reinforcing phenomenon and today we are as sensitive as a hundred years ago to the waves of hate which periodically engulf the public opinion. The case of the non-existing "Weapons of Mass Destruction" which led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is the most recent full size manifestation of this phenomenon. Others may be in the making right now.

So, a hundred years later, the story of the Great War is a lesson on how difficult it is for us to manage complex systems. Our society, one of the most complex systems that ever existed in human history, is subjected to destructive transitions created by emergent control phenomena which appear out of nowhere: unpredictable and uncontrollable. Propaganda feeds on itself and creates waves of hate which generate destructive wars. The illusory perception of abundance of oil and gas created by fracking leads to the diversion of immense amounts of resources to a task which is leading us nowhere. Waves of self-reinforcing optimism in the media lead to financial bubbles and then to destructive crashes, as it happened in 2008 and may happen again.

The war propaganda of one century ago looks to us hopelessly naive. But the core ideas developed at the time of the Great War are still with us, although often in subtler and more effective forms. The diffusion of the Internet is adding layers and layers of complexity to the once simple mechanisms of propaganda and the fragmentation of the infosphere makes it even more difficult to control it. Never in history, wehave faced such an incredibly complex system which is shaping our perception of the world. The infosphere is quickly becoming a game of mirrors where multiple images of the same thing scream at each other "I am the real one".

Where is it all leading us? We don't know, we cannot know. The future, as usual, is a dim reflection of the past. So, the Great War is part of our past, butalso of our future. With its more than 10 million deaths and with its incredible mix of love and hate, it is still part of the way we are, part of the way we see the world, part of the way we react to the unknown, to the mysterious essence of the universe.

______________________

These words by Olaf Stapledon (last and first men) may give us a hint of what we are facing.

Great are the stars, and man is of no account to them. But man is a fair spirit, whom a star conceived and a star
kills. He is greater than those bright blind companies. For though in them there is incalculable potentiality, in him
there is achievement, small, but actual. Too soon, seemingly, he comes to his end. But when he is done he will not be
nothing, not as though he had never been; for he is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things.

Man was winged hopefully. He had in him to go further than this short flight, now ending. He proposed even that he
should become the Flower of All Things, and that he should learn to be the All–Knowing, the All–Admiring. Instead, he
is to be destroyed. He is only a fledgling caught in a bush-fire. He is very small, very simple, very little capable of
insight. His knowledge of the great orb of things is but a fledgling’s knowledge. His admiration is a nestling’s
admiration for the things kindly to his own small nature. He delights only in food and the food-announcing call. The
music of the spheres passes over him, through him, and is not heard.

Yet it has used him. And now it uses his destruction. Great, and terrible, and very beautiful is the Whole; and for
man the best is that the Whole should use him.

But does it really use him? Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really
beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres,
and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can
never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably
so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

I think this video it is worth looking and listening at even if you don't understand Italian. It is the story of a lake which has naturally emerged in the middle of a (probably) illegal housing development in Rome. The buildings have partly collapsed and some of them were never completed. At some moment, a natural lake sprung out in the middle of the area and the best efforts of the owners of the property were not enough to destroy it. Now, the citizens of the area took to the lake in small boats, claiming for it to be common property against those who want to drain it to make more buildings.

The song is by the Italian rap group "Ilmurodel canto". Note the term "palazzinaro"; it can be translated as "building speculator" but, more colorfully, it could be "illegal housing development tycoon". You can read the whole story (and google-translate it from Italian) at this link.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

The main point that I am making with my latest book, "Extracted" is that mineral depletion is one of the major sources of our present economic and environmental troubles. Explaining this point is not easy: most people still seem to believe that depletion means "running out" of something. But that's not the case. Depletion is a gradual phenomenon that goes on all along the cycle of extraction of all mineral resources. Extraction starts with the "easy", high concentration resources, but gradually must move to more expensive, low concentration ones. As a result, the returns on extraction diminish with time (and extraction also causes more damage to the ecosystem). One of the consequences is the high prices we are seeing nowadays for all mineral commodities. It is not that we are running out of anything, but ore grades are falling everywhere, extraction is becoming more and more expensive, and that must have an effect on the market prices. The gradual disappearance of low cost/high grade ores can be seen with practically all mineral commodities, but it is especially evident with some of them. The article below is reproduced from Steven S. Rocco's blog and it describes the present situation with gold. As you can see, the gold industry is processing more and more ore to produce less and less gold. It is the inexorable law of depletion at work: we are not running out of gold, and we probably never will. But we'll have to face a falling supply.

With the results for 2013 finally in, the top
gold miners average yield fell to the lowest level ever. This is a
surprising development considering that the average price of gold
dropped to a low of $1,411 in 2013. Normally when the price of gold
falls, gold miners switch to higher grades to remain profitable.

However, the top five gold miners’ average yield declined another 5% in 2013.
If we look at the chart below, the top five gold miners (Barrick,
Newmont, AngloGold, Goldfields* & Goldcorp) average yield fell from
1.26 grams per ton (g/t) in 2012 to 1.20 g/t in 2013.

(*Note:GoldFields spun-off three mines into a new
company called Sibanye Gold in 2012. The data below includes both
companies listed as GoldFields.)

Furthermore, the average gold yield for the group declined from 1.68
g/t in 2005 to 1.20 g/t in 2013. Which means these miners lost 0.48 g/t
in just eight years… a 29% decline. That might not sound like a lot,
but if we do the math… it’s a substantial loss.

The next chart provides the astonishing blow to the gold mining
industry. In 2005, the group processed 464 million metric tons of ore
to produce 25.2 million ounces of gold at an average yield of 1.68 g/t.
In 2013, this same group processed 592 metric tons of ore (27% more),
to produce 22.9 million ounces of gold.

This is the negative side of the gold mining industry. Moreover, the
amount of waste rock removed is even greater. For example, Newmont
reported the following data in their 2007 & 2013 Sustainability
Reports;

Newmont Statistics

2005 Gold Production = 8.2 million oz

2005 Total Waste Rock = 425 million tonnes

2005 Waste Rock/Production Ratio = 52 metric tons/ gold oz

2013 Gold Production = 5.5 million oz

2013 Total Waste Rock = 620 million tonnes

2013 Waste Rock/Production Ratio = 113 metric tons/ gold oz

Newmont doubled the amount of waste rock generated to produce an
ounce of gold in 2013 than it did in 2005. This wasn’t a straight
increase over the eight year time-span. However the waste rock/
production ratio was 86 metric tons per ounce of gold in 2012… 65%
higher than 2005.

The more waste rock Newmont has to remove, the more energy is
consumed in the process. In 2005, Newmont consumed 19 gallons of diesel
in its operations to produce one ounce of gold. By 2012, this increased to a staggering 31 gallons per ounce…. a 63% increase in seven years.
As we can see, falling ore grades become a very expensive factor for the mining industry.

Not all the top five gold miners suffered a decline in average yields
in 2013. Barrick, Newmont and AngloGold saw a drop in average yields
in 2013, while GoldFields (include Sibanye Gold) and GoldCorp reported a
slight increase.
The company who suffered the largest decline in yield was AngloGold:

AngloGold’s average yield fell 15% in 2013 compared to 2012, while
Newmont declined 10% and Barrick at 6%. Even though these declines seem
quite large, I imagine we may actually see a leveling off or increase
in yields from these companies in 2014.

Unfortunately, high-grading
their mines to remain profitable at lower prices is only a temporary
solution. Worse yet, the link provides information on how this method
can leave a great deal of gold in the ground due to selecting the
high-grade ore while leaving low-grade ore uneconomical to extract.
So, if these top gold miners decide to high-grade their mines, we may
see a leveling (or slightly rising) of yields in 2014. However, this
may actually speed up the decline rates in yields further down the road.

I am waiting for data to be released by two companies so I can update
my chart on the average diesel consumption per ounce from the top five
gold miners. With the majority of results already in… I can honestly say, diesel consumption per ounce in 2013 will hit a new record high.

As ore grades continue to decline, the cost to produce gold will
inevitably rise. Some readers believe the higher energy price will be
the factor to push the value of gold to new highs. Actually, I don’t
believe this will be the case.
The world cannot afford high oil prices. We may experience temporary
OIL PRICE SPIKES, but I doubt the price of a barrel of Brent crude will
continue to rise towards $200.

The price of gold and silver
will rise to extreme levels in the future not on the back of higher oil
prices, but rather due to a falling oil supply and its impact on the
$100+ trillion of worthless paper-mache floating around the world’s
markets.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Italy is being hit by an economic tsunami caused by the high costs of mineral commodities which is destroying its industrial system and plunging the country in a deeper and deeper crisis. Unfortunately, the Italian government seems to be still locked in the obsolete paradigm of "restarting growth" no matter at what costs and that is worsening the problem instead of solving it. Others are trying to solve the problem by turning Italy into a giant amusement park for foreign tourists, obviously not a long term solution. However, some Italian companies are trying to fight the collapse by being more efficient, more innovative, and more creative. They are, in a sense, surfing the tsunami.

One of these companies is "Loccioni", an Italian company dedicated to energy management and other hi-tech ventures. Recently, they organized an international meeting where I had a chance to participate. It was a rare occasion to see a small Italian company able to take such an innovative stance. Here, Tatiana Yugay of the University of Moscow reports on the event.

On July 10-11, my virtual
friend Prof. Ugo Bardi invited me to participate in an interesting event
“2Km di Futuro: Smart Community and Social Immagination”. The
name itself looked rather intriguing and furthermore I was intrigued by the fact that I couldn't find the locality Angeli di
Rosora even in a very detailed road atlas of Italy. Fortunately, on
the eve of the Forum the organizers had sent me a link to a specially
created apps
for the event. It was very helpful since the apps contained all
the necessary info about the event, including the agenda and
navigation. I found out that the road of about 200 km was very easy
and it would take roughly two hours to get there from my town of
Montesilvano, Abruzzo. In fact, the event took place in the neighboring region
Le Marche. As I was driving inland by a picturesque highway
Ankona-Rome, I wondered what a kind of surprise could I expect in the
middle of nowhere? I love a tranquil beauty of Le Marche with green
hills topped by tiny mediaeval boroughs. However, I couldn't imagine
that one of those boroughs wold be capable to host an international
meeting of such a scale.

Nevertheless, all my
doubts were dispelled as soon as I arrived at the place of
destination, namely, the Loccioni
group. On both banks of a small river and right on the highway
Ankona-Rome, there were situated two big buildings with a modern
industrial look. The courtyard and lobby were full of buzzing groups
of participants.

I had attentively
studied a preliminary program beforehand
and was very much surprised that almost all the declared
speakers had really arrived. My long experience of participating in
conferences suggested that VIPs never come and,
at best, send their representatives. Fortunately,2Km Forum was an
exception to the general rule. We had a pleasure to listen and
observe presentations by Piero Cipollone, Executive Director of the
World Bank; Vincent Kitio, an Energy Advisor of the UN-Habitat; Vittorio Prodi, member of the European
Parliament; Carlo Papa, Chief Innovation
Officer of Enel Green Power; Young Chul Park, Vice-President of
Samsung Electronics et al. Moreover, there were present about 200
attendees from Italian and foreign universities and enterprises.

Enrico Loccioni,
head and founder of the Loccioni
group, opened the Forum. I was struck by
the fact that the main
keyword of his brief speech was “belezza” or beauty. The beauty
of creating smart community, preserving the beauty of natural and
architectural environment, the art
of disseminating beauty andso on.

The first session
“Smart Community” was moderated by Massimo Russo, Director of
Wired Italia. Prof. Ugo Bardi,
who represented the Rome Club,opened the session. The title of his recent
book “Extracted. How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the
Planet” (Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont, 2014) speaks for
itself. The main pathos of his speech was
directed against predatory use of non-renewable resources which
causes damage to the planet's ecosystem and slowdown of economic
growth. I follow Ugo
Bardi's blog
and always enjoy his encyclopedic knowledge and brilliant
improvisations, however,
I'm not that pessimistic. Maybe,
because I live in Russia and teach economics. In fact it's difficult
to be a catastrophist in
a country so rich in
all kinds of rare resources.

The next speaker,
Ken Webster of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, presented an
optimistic vision of a circular economy which
challenges theappreciation and exhaustion of
rare resources. According to Webster, the main concepts
of the circular economy are the
recirculation and
“access to
resources” as opposed to “ownership”.

One more rival
concept was presented on the second day by
Enzo Rullani, professor at TEDis, Venice International University and
Director of t.Lab of CFMT, Milan. As an expert on the knowledge
economy, he presumed that the paradigm of rare, more and more
expensive resources was well suited to the industrial capitalism but
in the informational society the main resource is information which
is abundant and has been becoming more
and more cheap.

I'm not going to
give an account
of all the presentations since they were
far beyond
my field of competence. Though, I'd
like to mention one more
presentation. Thomas Herzog, a German architect, who worked on the
design of Loccioni's
buildings and the surrounding area, described the masterplan of the
project pace by pace. In fact, he had been
realizing Enrico Loccioni's
concept of belezza.

Photo credit: Thomas Herzog

The masterplan had
to take into account not only the direct productive purpose of the
buildings but
also their aesthetic perception. As I wrote earlier, the site is
surrounded by charming mediaeval
hilltowns. According to Herzog, people
who live in these villages use to look down at the valley where
Loccioni's
buildings are located, so he was always
keeping in mind their bird's eye view.

When I was walking
over the bridge, I stopped to make a shot and remembered Herzog's
words. You can see on the photos that the modern industrial building
perfectly fits into the environment.

After the session,
there was a small tour about the enterprise.
First of all, we
could observe the
prime concept of the
Loccioni group - a
micro-grid – in action.

Then we watched how
a young operator was training a robot hand to type on a computer
keyboard.

In the courtyard, a
representative of Nissan was demonstrating Nissan hybrid cars.
Meanwhile tiny robots were crawling on the lawn.

After the first
meeting, we spent awonderful nightin agenuine mediaeval
atmosphere of St. Helene Abbey.

Theapéritif consisting of Le Marche's specialties was offered in a severe monastery setting.

The main courses were served in an elegantly decorated enclosed porch.

After the dinner, we were invited to the former church which now serves as a concert hall with an excellent acoustics. The Loccioni group
had prepared a wonderful surprise for us. A
famous Italian composer and pianist Giovanni Allevi played
his brilliant compositions on the piano. He is very young and has a modern look with thick
curly black hair and always wear black t-shirt and jeans. Frankly
speaking, I'm not fond of modern piano music, but Allevi is a genius
who lives in music, his “secret love”.

The
final accord was made by the picnic under a venerable oak.
Local farms and winemakers presented very
tasty typical Le
Marche's foods.

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

The new San Lorenzo mall in Florence, Italy. An American style food court designed mainly with international tourism in mind. It is an example of the attempt of the Italian economy to adapt to the ongoing collapse of its traditional manufacturing sectors, trying to exploit new sources of revenue. So far, this brand new set of restaurants seems to have been successful. Unfortunately, however, even foreign tourists may be an unsustainable resource.

If you happen to visit Florence, these days, you may notice the brand new food mall on the upper floor of the ancient downtown market. It is a major restructuring of what used to be a vegetable market, patronized mainly by locals. Now, it is a typical American style, "food court" with many different restaurants sharing the same tables.

From my personal experience, I can tell you that the food in this place is of medium quality; overpriced, but not terribly so. It is the kind of food that foreign tourists have come to expect in Florence, I'd call it fusion food with a Florentine veneer. Not that I want to discourage you from trying this place. On the contrary, it is at least a way to avoid the many abominable tourist traps you may be unfortunate enough to stumble upon in Florence (you may also like to take a look at some notes of mine on the ancient Florentine cuisine). I just wanted to note how it the new food court is an example of the present trends of the Italian economy.

I have already discussed the Italian collapse in previous posts (one and two). The collapse keeps going and the latest results from the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT) indicate that Italy has lost 25% of its industrial production after 2008, with no signs of improvement in view. Politicians are screaming about "restarting growth" but there is little that anyone can do facing such a disaster. The best they seem to be able to conceive is to trick the statistics in order to create the appearance of a non-existing recovery.

The collapse is mainly the result of the increasing burden on the Italian economy of more and more expensive imported mineral commodities. This extra burden has destroyed the competitivity of the Italian manufacturing industry. As a consequence, the Italian economic system is actively re-adapting, trying to find new resources. It must find "light" market niches, areas which don't need large amounts of energy and minerals to be run. It is finding them mainly in the fashion and the food industries.

If you live in Italy, and especially in Florence, you can't avoid noticing how the fashion industry is prospering; you can see that also from highly debatable initiatives such as "dressing" the Baptistery church in Florence as if it were a gigantic foulard. Gone are the traditional manufacturing power centers, and with them there went much of the traditional financial power in Italy. The Monte dei Paschi Italian bank survived the Black Death during the Middle Ages, but it may not survive peak oil! Even the celebrated new prime minister of Italy, Mr. Matteo Renzi, is a
consequence of the new balancing of the economic power in Italy.

Tourism is also quickly gaining a new status of fundamental resource in the Italian economy. Tourism has always been a traditional Italian industry, but now it is becoming something new: with impoverished Italians traveling less and less, International tourism is becoming dominant. But it is not any more the time when international visitors would stay in Italy for months or years, to explore the ancient culture and landscape. Now, tourists stay a few days at most and have little time and interest to explore things other than the standard sightseeing tours in the art cities: Venice, Florence and Rome. The result is the concentration of tourism in areas where it can be efficiently exploited by initiatives such as the food court in Florence I was reporting about. Outside these centers, tourism is in trouble, too.

So far, the expanding economies of some countries, primarily China, are providing an increasing flux of tourists to the main touristic centers of Italy. However, it takes little to expose the fragility of this small economic boom in Italy. Think of the possibility of a new financial crisis, such as the one of 2008, and you can imagine what's going to happen. Will the upper floor of the San Lorenzo market return what it used to be? Maybe, and my impression is that we really lost something by dismantling the old vegetable market.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Atomic cars are a good example of too much technology (image from "secondchancegarage"). The concept of diminishing technological returns of is the subject of the recent book Philippe Bihouix, "The Age of Low Technologies" (In French, "L'Age des Low Tech")

Recently, a friend of mine showed me an app for his new smartphone. It is called "catspeak" (or something like that) and allows you to choose a message to send to your cat which, then, the phone will translate and vocalize in cat language. Unbelievably, it works! At least, my cats seemed to be very impressed by being addressed by the phone with the meowing meaning "go away" or "I'm angry at you."

This idea of speaking to your cat using a smartphone app seems to be the most egregious example I can find of the concept of "too much technology". Think of the cost of modern smartphones in terms of precious and non renewable resources. Then, you can't avoid to wonder how is it possible that they are used for such silly purposes.

The concept of "too much technology" is the subject of the recent book by Philippe Bihouix (one of the co-authors of "Extracted") titled "The Age of Low Technologies" (In French, "L'Age des Low Tech"). Bihouix is a first class technologist, at ease in several different fields from electronics to biotechnologies. And his criticism of the naive enthusiasm of the public for the new gizmos presented in the media is simply devastating. He takes no prisoners in his demolition of some of the pet ideas of some fashionable technological gurus. Just read the section on nanotechnologies and, well, you'll see what I mean. The nanotechnologist has no clothes, really.

A consequence of diminishing returns is the phenomenon we call "peaking" as the result of overshoot when people misjudge the long term returns of their activities. It occurs with oil extraction and it also occurs with new technologies: they tend to "peak." They reach extreme performance and then slow down, adapting to a compromise between performance and cost.

The best example of this phenomenon is, I think, with today's planes. They have noticeably slowed down from the time of the supersonic Concorde, to emphasize efficiency and comfort. The Concorde was simply too expensive to be a practical technology: it was a plane in overshoot. It is likely that something like that will happen to today's smartphones - right now, they are wonderful devices, but they are in a condition of resource overshoot. In the future, we will not be able to maintain their extreme performance facing the increasing costs of rare mineral resources. That doesn't mean that smartphones will disappear (although that's not impossible) but it means that some kind of compromise between performance and cost will have to be reached. Bihouix's book is very much based on this concept: that is how it will be possible to balance performance and cost after "peak technology". It is a fascinating description of a world which moves a little slower than ours and which, of course, can't pretend to keep growing forever. But it is also a world rich of possibilities; not less interesting than ours and also better under many respects. A truly remarkable book - by all means recommended! There is only this small problem with the language, but, come on, don't you eatsometimes a baguette and drink café au lait? Then, "L'age des low tech" is worth of a little effort of deciphering!

Who

Ugo Bardi is a member of the Club of Rome and the author of "Extracted: how the quest for mineral resources is plundering the Planet" (Chelsea Green 2014). His most recent book is "The Seneca Effect" to be published by Springer in mid 2017

Listen! for no more the presage of my soul, Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil; But as the morning wind blows clear the east,More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.(Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

Ugo Bardi's blog

This blog is dedicated to exploring the future of humankind, affected by the decline of the availability of natural resources, the climate problem, and the human tendency of mismanaging both. The future doesn't look bright, but it is still possible to do something good if we don't discount the alerts of the modern Cassandras. (and don't forget that the ancient prophetess turned out to be always right).

Above: Cassandra by Evelyn De Morgan, 1898

Chimeras: another blog by UB

Dedicated to art, myths, literature, and history with a special attention to ancient monsters and deities.

The Seneca Effect

The Seneca Effect: is this what our future looks like?

Extracted

A report to the Club of Rome published by Chelsea Green. (click on image for a link)

Rules of the blog

I try to publish at least a post every week, typically on Mondays, but additional posts often appear on different days. Comments are moderated. You may reproduce my posts as you like, citing the source is appreciated!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(whirlything)unifi.it